


Corporate Head-Hunting

by Corycides



Category: Revolution (TV)
Genre: Gen, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-15
Updated: 2013-09-15
Packaged: 2017-12-26 15:36:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/967655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Corycides/pseuds/Corycides
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maggie knew Ben was never honest, but she had secrets of her own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Corporate Head-Hunting

After 14 hours everyone was eager to get out of the airport, jousting with luggage carts in their haste to be first to officially arrive. At the doors a crowd of people doing double duty as signposts, holding up signs expectantly. Some were printed in neat block capitals on laminated cards, others were scrawled in felt-top on folded A4.

Unsurprisingly, the people she was meeting hadn’t taken that option.

‘Doctor Margaret Foster?’ the thin, balding smile with the hollow smile intercepted her on her way to the taxi rank. ‘I’m Randall Flynn. I’m so glad you could make it.’

His fingers were soft against her palm and he squeezed too hard, compressing her bones. The urge to squeeze back came and passed her by. She’d dealt with worse.

‘Call me Maggie,’ she said.

‘Not Doctor?’ There was something subtly testing about his voice, like he thought it told him something important about her. Maybe it did.

‘Introduce yourself as a doctor, people expect you to care about their haemorrhoids,’ she said. ‘I don’t.’

‘Is that really in the spirit of the Hippocratic Oath,’ he said. Again. She could feel the sly slide of his jibe poke at her, weighing her reaction

‘I didn’t swear it,’ she said. ‘Considering my line of work, it would be more of a hypocritical oath wouldn’t it?’

He chuckled and gestured past the taxi rank to a mid-range black sedan, just luxurious enough from the driver not to catch attention.

‘I suppose you’re right,’ the man said. He offered to take her bag, she politely refused. ‘If you were interested in “doing no harm”, you’d be at the World Health Organisation. Not in a Porton Down viral think tank.’

The wheels of Maggie’s suitcase squinted and bounced along the pavement as they walked briskly through the market-place barter of passenger and driver haggling for fares. She was tired enough that it took her a second to remember the party line.

‘Our work might not make it onto the news, but we save as many lives as they do,’ she mouthed dutifully. ‘Our research enables us to fight terrorism with a single immunization injection.’

She didn’t know if that sounded convincing, even to her. Of course, she didn’t need to be. If they’d sent the man here to meet her, then he knew her work was hardly...innocuous.

‘That, Maggie,’ he said, pursing his lips around her name. ‘is why we want you to transfer to our Denver...call it facility.’

He stretched his legs to pass her and opened the car door, offering her a hand in to the plush, leather interior. The driver, a lean, suited man with ridiculously stereotypical government agent sunglasses, hopped out to grab her bag and throw it in the back.

Maggie scooted along  to the other side of the car, leaving space for the man to get in.

‘So by facility, Mr….?’

‘Flynn.’

‘Mr Flynn. You mean?’

‘It’s called the Tower,’ he said, sliding in and closing the door with a final click. ‘There are some excellent schools in the catchment area.’

The agent who almost certainly wasn’t just a chauffeur jumped back into the driver’s seat. They pulled out into traffic.

‘Why me?’ she asked.

‘You’re good. One of the best,’ Flynn said. He leant forwards and pulled a bottle of soda from the in-car mini-bar. ‘A drink, Maggie?’

‘Not the best?’

‘No,’ he admitted, pouring himself a glass instead. ‘But the best can afford morals.’

* * *

In the end, Maggie wasn't surprised when the world ended. She just hadn't expected it to end with the flick of a light-switch instead of the bloody splutter of ebola. It was a relief, she supposed, to have one thing she'd not have to feel guilty about.


End file.
